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Chris Cillizza is the Having the Best Time

Note to all of the grumbling reporters slumped in folding chairs in the convention press file: Chris Cillizza is having more fun than you.

Over the course of last week and a half, we at GQ keep finding ourselves a little disoriented, worn out from the long drives and weird hours and bad food, fed up with the shoe-soaking rain that seems always to hit when we walk between buildings. At the nightly post-parties where reporters congregate, it is fashionable to complain about how exhausted you are as much as possible—ignoring the fact that staying out till 2:00 a.m. to gripe to each other may not be the best solution to problem.__

The Washington Post writer behind The Fix, though, never complains. In fact, he’s not at the parties at all—he’s too busy with his nightly "winners and losers" column, or filing one last observation, or backslapping with a fan; or tweeting to his 135,000 followers: "Don’t Stop Believing" currently piping through convention site. That song rules. And Click on this. Immediately. And I would kill to be able to whistle with my two fingers (after seeing a delegate do it). And What should we expect from Bill Clinton? I break it down—video-style! We wondered: how does one man stay this happy in the midst of such an oppressive grind?

Even trying to locate Cillizza at a convention is a bit like what my chemistry teacher used to say about locating an electron: it moves so fast that the best you can do is assign it a probability. This is what it was like to try to pin him down for an interview on a Thursday in Tampa. At 11:22, Cillizza wrote only that he was "at workspace." At 1:59 p.m. he was "back very soon." At 2:34 p.m. he was "here now but writing. Little later?" We agreed on 3:30, but at 3:41 he was, perplexingly, "en route" (from where?). When I found him, finally, at his desk in the corner of the Post’s encampment at the Republican convention, he grinned, leapt to his feet, and suggested we go someplace else.

"The big thing about the conventions is like, ’Oh it’s no news, it’s just staged theater,’" Cillizza said as we walked, channeling the conventional wisdom of the credentialed masses. "That’s true on the big stuff, but there’s tons of interesting people and stories, I think, that you can find."

Cillizza, 36, has the clean cut and broad jaw of a ’50s varsity man and the ’00s square glasses of a writer. He often refers to himself as The Fix, the blog incarnate; his progeny become "Fix Jr." and his fans "the Fixistas." He hosts a monthly bar-trivia night called Politics & Pints, an event he happily reprised on location in the two convention cities. We sat down at a table in the Tampa Convention Center’s cross-hall, and as we talked, he seemed to be looking everywhere at once, taking everything in and smiling right back at every passerby. He took a bite of an apple.

"We default to cynicism," he said—although I think he was only including himself in the press horde to be polite— "We’re all packed in one place, so I think the kind of cynicism, and the kind of world-weariness, it feeds on itself. It’s like, everybody you see says ’I’m tired,’ and ’Man, what long days,’ and it’s true—like dude, I’m really tired. And it’s a long day, and I have a 6:00 a.m. flight tomorrow morning." I nodded along, pretending like I hadn’t just spent the morning railing about these downers. "I’m not even sure everybody is as tired and world-weary as they suggest they are; they just think that that’s the right position."

"But you don’t have to be," he continued, "I like politics. I like being here. I like seeing people I’ve known for a long time. I like talking about politics with people."

This kind of earnestness can be irritating: It’s part of an overall Cillizza-ness, a Fixation, if I may, that drives his competitors, and even just professional acquaintances, out of their skin. A sampling of unsolicited, anonymous gripes about him from the last 24 hours:

_—He annoys the shit out of me.

—I hate everything Chris Cillizza stands for.

—He just became a hack and never turned the corner to see around the story._

But these people, I think, are missing the point. His own self-assessment ("It’s kind of like Mystery Science Theater for politics. It’s a guy who is here, but is just kind of an average dude, riffing on what I see") also kind of misses the point. Cillizza is not trying to see around the story, or stand outside it. While the rest of us are whining about the murky swirl of today’s lame politics, pretending we’re too cool to care, Cillizza is simply glorying in it. This is the bottom of the ocean, and he is a deep-sea creature. This is his context. It quite literally created him: he’d never been political, he says, until as a new college graduate he realized he’d never write that novel and landed on a job at The Cook Political Report. "I always say I have the zeal of the converted," he told me.

His zeal has created a whole bunch more converts, too. When I dropped in on the Charlotte Politics & Pints last night, soaked from rain and questioning my own choices, I found Cillizza atop a small stage at the back of an Irish bar, shouting questions at more than thirty multi-person teams. "Question number five," he announced to the room. "Charles Cornwallis is best known as surrendering at what 1781 battle?" A guy in a safari vest bent low over his answer sheet, conferring over the din with his partner. At other tables, rowdier groups of four and five spilled beer as they shouted answers at each other. Many wore Politics & Pints t-shirts, distributed free to all comers. Cilliza paced the stage in a blue dress shirt and jeans, microphone in hand.

"The final question of the evening..." Boos from the crowd. A smile from the host. "I’m sorry! What can I do?"

"Drink a beer!" an admirer suggested.

"I have to go work after this," Cillizza answered gleefully. "I cannot drink a beer. I am barely coherent without any alcohol." And then, continuing with mock graveness for the amusement of the Fixistas: "We can’t take that risk!"

As Politics & Pints wound down—keynote speaker Julián Castro would be taking the podium shortly—Cillizza read off the scores by team name "Drinking Liberally, 41! Lyin’ Paul Ryan, 32, but without question the loudest! Zen Wisconsin, 50!" He plugged an upcoming P&P back in DC, and the Fixistas shouted their approval. "Thank you for coming; spread the word," Cillizza shouted as he began to walk off the stage. "Enjoy. Your. Convention!"

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